A protean figure: Big Otis and Kellogg's OK

Early cereal ads on TV had no idea how to pronounce the word protein.

It always came out "PROTE-ee-an", or something like it.  I don't think people knew or cared much about nutrition then, though the ads always claimed the cereal caused children to grow to almost supernatural heights.

I knew "protean" had something to do with Proteus, a character from Greek mythology, but couldn't remember anything about him. So had to look it up.

Definition of proteus

any of a genus (Proteus) of aerobic usually motile enterobacteria that include saprophytes in decaying organic matter and a common causative agent (P. mirabilis) of urinary tract infections

Proteus: a Greek sea god capable of assuming different forms

Definition of protean:

of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms

displaying great diversity or variety

Protean is not to be confused with protein (a member of a large group of chemicals necessary to and found in all living things).

But I also found this astonishing fact:

PROTEUS An elderly Sea-God who was the son and seal-herder of Poseidon.

How can the son of someone be elderly? This is full of mystery, and I don't feel like exploring it because it has nothing to do with Kellogg's OK, an obsolete cereal of the '60s. I did try very hard to find a picture of Proteus, and all I could find was Poseidon. All right, they didn't make any cruise ship disaster movies about Proteus, but I SHOULD be able to find a picture of him!

And how in God's name do you herd seals?

News flash!

OK, I JUST FOUND THIS:

This is, supposedly, Proteus, though he does not appear to be herding seals. In fact, maybe the thing with the tail is Proteus! And he certainly isn't elderly, but who is elderly all their lives?

And, even better, I found this picture of Poseidon. So Otis isn't the only one who likes to dress up funny.

Pretty useless gifs

Frozen in the headlights

The Canadian Press
Published Friday, July 15, 2016 12:39PM EDT
Last Updated Friday, July 15, 2016 1:09PM EDT

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/pm-trudeau-says-canada-will-work-to-fight-terrorism-1.2988472

CALGARY -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is thinking of "our friends in France" and will work to fight terrorism.

"We had a terrible attack last night and our hearts go out to the victims and their families," Trudeau said Friday while in Calgary to attend the Stampede.

"Canada stands with France as a steadfast ally and we will work with the international community to fight terror to ensure that we live in a peaceful world."

There were no reports of Canadian casualties. At least 84 people were killed when a truck full of weapons plowed into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers in the French resort city of Nice late Thursday.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the federal government has no information that would necessitate a change in Canada's terror threat level, which is currently at medium.

Still, Goodale urged Canadians to stay vigilant and alert.

"Canadians can rest assured that when the security and intelligence sector receives credible warnings on a specific threat, they work with the appropriate government partners to ensure the safety of Canadians," Goodale said in a statement.

Goodale noted that while in Paris in January, he signed a declaration with his French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, to work together on terrorism, organized crime and irregular migration.

OK. I'm not saying these guys are bad. I'm not even saying these guys are negligent or don't know how to do their jobs.

I just think these guys have run out of things to say.

I think they're having a harder and harder time helping Canadians feel safe. It's no longer going to work telling us they'll be sure to to warn us if something bad is about to happen.

There were no such warnings in Nice.

There was only a split-second of "warning", then chaos and death as 84 people were ploughed down, their lives ended in mid-breath. Nobody expected it except the killer.

So Justin Trudeau is called upon to, as usual, say a few words aboaut the latest atrocity. And this from the Calgary Stampede! I'm not against the Calgary Stampede, though I really hate how the chuckwagon races seem to kill at least a few horses every year.

But it's the juxtaposition. Horrendous carnage. Calgary Stampede. And bland, predictable words from the son of a "great" Prime Minister who was vilified all during his very long tenure (which was very long ago).

We grab at the familiar, in hope. We gasp for reassurance.

None of us gets a warning. We don't.

Many people are now thoroughly sick of "our thoughts and prayers go out to --- ", especially with regards to mass shootings. But this has become an "insert atrocity here" statement, and we're hearing it practically every week.

My daughter, a seasoned TV newswoman, believes the world is doomed. It was alarming to hear her talk yesterday. In my worst moments, I agree with her, though even in my own blog I have to be careful how I write about it. Of course it can be said that she's right up against it every day, reporting on all the worst stuff that happens worldwide.

But the worst is getting worse. The bland is getting REALLY bland, and stretched pretty thin.

If a real disaster happened in Canada, I'm not sure how Justin Trudeau would handle it.

"He's like a deer in the headlights," my husband likes to say.

Let us hope we never find out. But how can we know for sure?

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To an unfriended asshole

This was one of those tiresome Facebook situations where someone (a "friend", i. e. someone you know next-to-nothing about) jumps all over you for a fairly innocent and likely misunderstood comment. Somebody posted something about the whole All Lives Matter issue by some "rich white guy" (known to be a rich white guy) claiming to know more about it than most people by dint of the fact that he was a rich white guy. My comment was something like "who IS this guy?" I honestly didn't know who he was, but the poster, and I'm damned if I remember his name because I am trying so hard to forget it, took it really literally and even personally and sent me one of those long, long, twist-and-turny replies bristling with sniping hostility that I did not even read, I was so eager to get to "unfriend"! Then later on, somewhere, under some post of MINE, he made another snarky comment about my unfriending him. Gee, why did I do THAT, I wonder? Such a swell fellow! He was ripping into me for not wanting to be his "friend" any more. 

Not for him but for me, I began to gather my thoughts about all this and write, then thought they might be worth posting here because they sum up a lot of "where I am at" (as they used to say) right now. By the way, the reply would not post because he is no longer my friend, so he will never find out what I thought about the whole thing! But the guy was an asshole anyway, who needs him? I have even had to cut loose from some long-time friends who had wandered off into a mental wilderness that was very dark, too dark for me to enter into. And social media can be a jungle.

Is it sad? I suppose it is, but it's also a lesson in what really matters. Anyway, here is my comment/"reply" to the unfriended asshole, which he will never read because he is no longer my "friend". 

My FB policy now is if I feel ANY stress at all from ANY interaction, I just have to get away from it. I don't even think about it for too long - it's a reflex. My mental health is too valuable to subject it to any unnecessary stress. I'm pretty much on the verge of bailing from the whole FB thing. It's not too enjoyable, and I have to ask myself, often, what am I gaining, and/ or what is the other person gaining from all this? 

I mean, what is the real benefit, if any? Was I all withered up mentally before social media, was I starving or lacking or was I "not myself"? It seems to me that life was richer and that personal interaction was richer and more considered when you had to go find a stamp and carry the message to the mail box. If this is to have any meaning whatsoever, I need to be able to say what I think or feel, but it's starting to seem like I get jumped on if anything too "real" comes out. Then the feeling is: can't you stand up and defend yourself, then? Why? I honestly did not KNOW who this guy was - still don't, and felt tired by another stream of commentary, tired of the whole thing, of people killed and blown up, of endless comments, comments, COMMENTS when it leads to exactly nothing!

I was never meant for this, only got into it to promote my book (ha!) because that's what you do, and fell down a rabbit hole which has been mostly unpleasant. I unfriend now without giving it much of a thought. Why? These aren't my friends! No, they aren't, my friends are my friends and most of these people are just something else. I was naive and really blundered into it in a wrongheaded way, having no idea how to do it, thinking that amassing a lot of writing/publishing associates was what I was supposed to do. Jesus. What I am supposed to do is write from the heart, put it out there and forget about it, then, the next day, do the same thing over again. This process du jour is what gives me joy and is never boring, no matter what anyone says about it.

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"All lives matter to the. . . grape?"

Published on Jul 13, 2016

The Canadian vocal group The Tenors have apologized after a member of the collective changed the lyrics of national anthem "O Canada" to include "all lives matter" at the MLB All-Star Game. During opening ceremonies inside San Diego's Petco Park, the group took the field to sing their country's national anthem when one singer, Remigo Pereira, went rogue and altered the song lyrics and held up a sign that read "All Lives Matter."

There was so much that was offensive, stupid and just WRONG about this incident that it's hard to know just where to begin.

This guy, Remigo Pereira, who "identifies as Canadian" (but who isn't, because he was born in Boston), took it upon himself to mutilate the words of O Canada before a baseball game. I mean crucify them. Not the whole thing, mind. He just ripped out two (unnecessary, he must have thought) lines, "With glowing hearts we see thee rise/The true north strong and free", and casually substituted, "We're all brothers and sisters/All lives matter to the grape." Or great, or grave, or brave - no one quite knows! Mysteriously, this line about grapes is usually followed by, "From far and wide, o Canada/we stand on guard for thee", which is not the best rhyme I've ever heard. Grapes/thee? Brave/thee? Grave? Great? Oh.

Oh. 

Where do I start?

Why would anyone, faux Canadian or not, casually and unannounced, change two lines of any national anthem, especially the national anthem of a country which has bickered over amending TWO WORDS (changing "in all thy sons" to "in all of us", a tectonic shift to the average Canadian) for seven or eight years?

You don't mess with national anthems. You just don't! Even if someone had to get up in public and sing O Say Can You See, they'd have to choke their way through all those "rocket's red glare/bombs bursting in air" references, verbatim. It's only being respectful.

That is the way she is wrote.

Another thing. If you are at all professional, you don't change ANY important aspect of a performance without rehearsing it in advance, or, at very least, letting your fellow group members know what you're planning to do.

You don't write two plug-ugly, non-scanning, non-rhyming, nonsensical lines, rip out the two perfectly good/poetic lines that were already there, and jam in your cobbled-together piece of shit in their place.

You don't.

But it's so much more than that! You don't, don't don't DON'T make reference to a politically sensitive topic that has touched off raw and painful feelings in a group which has been historically marginalized. You don't wade in there assuming people will approve of your thuglike ignorance of the issues. Was he trying to convince the crowd, was he assuming they all agreed with him, or merely trying to lay waste to a perfectly good national anthem that has served the country for a hundred years?

The only less-appropriate subject he could have picked would be Muslims. (I will now turn on my ugly switch and see if I can write as awkwardly as he did.)

"They're all terrorists, let us build a wall
And keep. . .them. . .out. . .of. . .here."

Trump might approve, but no one else would know where to look.

In this age of Twitter, a faux pas like that instantly rockets around the world. It makes Canadians look stupid. Americans probably think that IS the way it goes, or at least that it has been mysteriously amended, and are wondering why.

A country's national anthem is important. It used to be a means to rally the troops, like the flag. Even in this tweety-twit-ridden age, it still reflects, more or less, what its people believe and is usually something they can get behind. Casually mangling the words of it is trespass. Invasion. Buggering it all up! Holding up a grotty little piece of paper that you probably quickly scribbled with a Bic pen and a sheet of lined paper is hardly a dignified way to make a political statement. 

A ball game is NOT where you proudly and arrogantly display your own personal and highly obnoxious beliefs!

As for the way the group handled this. . . Pereira was immediately labelled a “lone wolf", kind of like a mad dog that had to be put down at the vet.  The rest of the group quickly put this guy in the corner. It was the good old "he did it!" of childhood, with the accompanying finger-point.

There is the usual sobbing contrition on Twitter, the gee guys, I didn’t really mean it, I was trying to make a statement which would unite all of humanity. This sort of slobber seems to excuse any horrible, insensitive thing a person wants to blast out there. People’s attention span is only a few seconds now, so this will very quickly be forgotten and even forgiven. The group's discharge of the rogue tenor was very conditional: "until further notice", making you wonder just what that "further notice" will be.

But no, it doesn't make you wonder! It means "until we take him back". He's on Twitter now, for Christ's sake! We might get some likes, some followers, maybe even go viral.

The group's popularity, or at least their notoriety, has soared because of this joker. He'll be in great demand. Maybe the Americans will actually want him now:

O say can you see

Donald Trump in a tree?

Or maybe he'll start a trend of IMPROVISING the lyrics to every national anthem! Why stick to those stodgy old words? They're so yesterday. Maybe a rap would be more exciting.

And let's change the tune, too. Throw out the whole thing.

Remigio Pereira

I speak for the human race and the lives of all sentient beings. Love, peace and harmony for ALL has always been my life's purpose.

The preceeding Twitter quote is Pereira's justification/explanation for holding up that grotty little piece of paper before the game: see, he speaks for the human race! His little amended (improved?) ditty encompasses the feelings, passions and aspirations of seven billion people. Hey, I didn't think he was THAT good a singer, but then, I was distracted by how atrocious he is as a lyricist. Let us hope that "all sentient beings" are coping with this ego-driven shenanigan better than I am. 

Makeagif is NOT working again!

While I didn't exactly lie, I was premature in saying Makeagif was working again.

It still don't work worth shit.

So I am stuck with Imgur, which is quite a bit trickier to use and makes HUGE gifs that are harder to download/manage. But on the plus side, the resolution is much better. It seems to crop the gifs rather oddly however. I have no control over that. And the maximum you get is 15 seconds, which means my favorite Lloyd reaction from this movie (Never Weaken) is shortened. The entire reaction shot lasts nearly half a minute, one of the longest I've seen in any comedy, and yet more proof that Harold had the best acting chops of any of them.

But no more 20-second gifs. Makeagif appears to be permanently fucked.

I've made this gif over and over again, and never quite get it right. This one has a bit of the street below in it, which I both like and don't like. This one was actually probably made with Gifsforum (do I hear taps playing? I used to love them, then they disappeared.) It's hard to tell the difference, though the Imgur one is, like, 700 pixels wide or something. Oh, who gives a fuck!

Gallery: Night of the Trolls

Baffled: why isn't my novel on the bestseller list?

This article from The Baffler (link at the bottom) is way too long to even quote here, but it has some interesting ideas in it.

To a point.

I was irritated at the way she delivered a long-winded dissertation about how society makes everything our own individual fault and how narcissism/self-absorption is the only defense (paving the way for "remedy-of-the-week" packaged solutions, available online for a price), THEN she abruptly switched directions and wrote in a rather smug way about how practicing yoga/radical self-care has completely revolutionized her life, lifting her neatly out of the quagmire she has just written about.

She seems to be praising, practicing and extolling the very thing she was dissing only a minute ago.

It's the same feeling I get - and how I wish I could just stop reading these things - about articles I see on Facebook that talk about "The Miserable, Lonely, Traumatic Life of a Writer" - only to find out, near the end of the article, that the writer is either J. K. Rowling, Stephen King or a clone thereof. Meaning: yes, it was hell at first, but now I'm in the chips big-time, so I thought I'd throw you dogs a crumb or two of my deathless wisdom so YOU can drool over my unreachable success.

Hey! I was once like you, lonely, unsuccessful, stigmatized, and probably fat. I mean it! Then I joined another species and began to accumulate sales/literary awards like a snowball rolling down a hill.

I always feel the tide turning in these pieces - I know it's coming. It happens at just past the 3/4 mark. They're about to abandon us. Any time. Their compassion for us or whatever-it-is is about to evaporate. A Grand Canyon of exclusivity is about to open up between them and us. So much for their ability to "identify" with us literary peons who, if we finish our novel at all, will never find an agent; or who, if we find an agent, will never find a publisher; or who, if we find a publisher, will never find a publicist; and who, if we never find a publicist, will somehow, and mysteriously, never find ourselves at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List.

Aim at 100 rejections, the articles say. Or a thousand! The implication is that if you persevere and persevere, if you never give up, never give up, never give up the ship, and (of course!) never take any of it personally, one day success will inevitably come. It simply has to, after all that perseverence, doesn't it? It's the law of physics or something.

But the awful truth (and I realize this is a totally taboo and unpopular thing to say) is that it might not: in fact, by the law of averages, it likely won't.  With every rejection you receive, the odds of success become slimmer, not fatter. It means more and more and more editors are telling you that they just don't like your stuff, increasing the odds that it is basically unpublishable and you should just go home and do yoga.

Saying this is the ultimate taboo because it makes you a party pooper. But I had a favorite line from a Moxy Fruvous song (until I found out, to my horror, that Jian Ghomeshi was in Moxy Fruvous):

"Everyone's a novelist, and everyone can sing
But no one talks when the TV's on."

This was long before the ubiquity of self-publishing, not to mention all those talent shows on TV. The only point I am trying to make - and please don't throw rocks at me - is that for every person who performs on America's Got Talent and the like, hundreds or even thousands of people audition and are rejected. Each and every one of those people believe they have what it takes to win, to be a star.

They don't.

Does that mean you shouldn't try? Don't take advice from me, please - Ms. Three Failed Novels! At least I finished my novels, sent them out a billion times, found a publisher, and saw my books (all three of them) on store shelves. This filled me with satisfaction and pride. But that was that. All the other shit didn't happen. No New York Times. No glass slipper.  I did get absolutely glowing reviews for the first one, it was considered worthy of major awards and compared to Alice Munro, but nobody bought it. My fingertips just brushed the brass ring, but I wasn't able to grab the prize.

Why? Hell if I know. And it happened two more times after that.

So am I bitter? Don't know. A realist? Definitely. "It's always so hard to leave Paris," a friend of mine recently wrote on Facebook. Myself, I find it hard not to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Oh, I know that collecting 100 rejections is an exercise in self-toughening that might serve you if you were ever in a plane crash in Antarctica. But they might just lead to 101, or 102. There is no guarantee you'll have a sudden, remarkable breakthrough that will cause millions of people to buy your book.

And believe me, if they don't BUY it, you've pretty much failed. Publishers have to go home and buy groceries too, and if they keep taking a bath on your books, they may be a little bit reluctant to take a bath on the next book, and the next. Everyone has to survive. I am not blaming publishers, at all. In fact, I'm not blaming anyone. But unless you are in the tiny fraction of a percentage that makes a go of it, these are the facts as I see them.

As for self-publishing, well. . . I won't get into that, except to say "ditto, and double".

Is this gloomy? Or realistic?

You decide. But you will note that I have not stopped writing.

http://thebaffler.com/blog/laurie-penny-self-care

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!